No orders needed to be given when the horde made it to the hundred-yard mark, and it became clear that the landmines were doing nothing to slow their advance. The Fusion Flamers burst to life, scorching the air, while the explosions of the Mass Drivers were set to detonate just far enough behind the front line to throw the wounded Myceloids off their feet.
For a few glorious seconds, it was working. The horde faltered, and the mass behind the front line was forced to a stop. But then the ones behind them began throwing the off-balance and injured members of their force forward toward the Mecha, blocking the Flamers and allowing them to charge forward through the detonations of the Mass Drivers.
They were taking serious injuries, but the creatures healed incredibly quickly and had no sense of self-preservation. All that the Mecha could do was continue their defensive fire and hope that the next round of bombers would have some luck creating a clearing in the tide to give them a bit of a breather and allow the second line time to regroup.
The bombers didn't even have time to circle the battlefield. They spread out from the warehouse in an evenly spaced circle, dropped what bombs they could, and then were shot out of the sky. It was enough to help as the cluster bombs cleared a wider area than you could safely do with a single large explosion, but not nearly as much as Max had hoped for.
"Well, it looks like we're in for it now. Look in the back. I mean, when the flying body parts stop for a second, and the sensors can see again." Nico chuckled as Max analyzed the disappointing results of the bombing run.
The Myceloids had created a huge siege tower of their own, designed to topple forward and throw the occupants at the top when it was destroyed. If it made it to the trench and toppled in, there would most likely be hand-to-hand combat seconds after, and no amount of defensive fire would stop it.
The Hunters had thought the same thing, and the creeping advance of the artillery was reset early, starting at the trenches and working its way outward. The siege tower took a direct hit, and as Max had expected, it tossed its occupants forward as it crumbled.
But thanks to the explosion, many of them were already dead, and the early bombardment had landed them fifty metres from the front lines, right in the middle of the Fusion Flamers pattern.
Similar scenes played out on the other sides of the camp, with similar results as the Hunters mimicked the human weapons choices for their brutal efficiency when outnumbered.
The battle chant of the Myceloids shook the air enough that it registered even through the explosions as the artillery fire rolled through their ranks, thinning them but not stopping the assault. The defenders were essentially firing blind with all the smoke in the air, choking out sensors and preventing any sort of effective targeting. It was allowing the Myceloids to run zigzag patterns in hopes of dodging the projectiles, and the front lines were slowly creeping closer to the first wall that the defenders had built.
There wasn't much left of it anyhow. The constant stream of bullets went two ways, and the wall had been taking the fury of the Myceloid retaliation for the whole battle without any attempt to repair or lessen the burden it was bearing.
[The enemy is now at twenty metres on the South Side.]
[The enemy is at thirty metres on the East Side.]
[The enemy is at thirty metres on the North Side.]
Max double-checked the range along the Western Front and called in his report.
[The enemy is at forty metres on the West Side]
They didn't have long before things got really messy for the defenders, who had been mostly safe as they stacked bodies so far this fight.
[All Front Line troops, get behind cover in four seconds.] Huntress Khan's voice announced.
Max fired off a few more rounds, then ducked behind the ruins of the wall as a searing beam of energy passed overhead.
The Huntress had deployed an Orbital Lance in a circular pattern around the camp by turning one of their attack craft on its axis.
The damage was devastating, and Max shuddered as he realized that the Anomaly had become unstable with the massive discharge. The opening had increased by nearly ten percent in size, and the boundaries were still fluctuating.
Now, it made sense why they hadn't gone against the Alliance's recommendations and cleared the planet by force. Doing it would tear a Destroyer-sized opening in space that led to a populated planet of the Alliance.
The Orbital Lance effectively ended the push of the Myceloid force, Max thought. But according to his sensors, the enemy hadn't fallen for the trick quite so easily. He was picking up a lot of signatures in the distance, possibly in the ground, since everything else seemed to have been obliterated as the beam passed overhead.
[Reserve teams, push out and start burning all signs of Myceloid life. We don't need the spore spawning in our yard. Front Line teams, rebuild the fortifications, and you may retreat and rest. Second Rank forward to the front lines, third rank, take up the back line.] Huntress Khan commanded.
Max passed a similar message to his troops.
[Teams One and Two, move to the back lines once the fortifications are rebuilt and let the Hunters take over the front lines until the next shift ends.] He commanded.
It wasn't like the Androids needed to sleep, and after this battle, Max suspected that they would be getting a request for even more of them to man the trenches. They had taken some damage during the battle, but with the wall in front of them, their own energy barriers had absorbed most of it, and the rest was easily repaired thanks to the majority of their body being behind cover.
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